Tesla Draws Lawmakers’ Ire for Now-Disabled Rolling-Stop Feature

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. came under fire in a House hearing for the recently disabled-feature of its so-called Full Self-Driving system that permitted its vehicles to slowly roll through intersections.

The feature gives drivers the option of choosing an “assertive” mode in the driver-assist function that sends the vehicle rolling through all-way stop intersections at low speeds if no other cars or pedestrians were present.

Tesla shut down the feature with an over-the-air software fix after discussions with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to a recall notice filed online Tuesday by the agency. No accidents have been reported, Tesla told NHTSA.

“What justification is there for developing a program that allows vehicles to violate state and local laws?” Representative Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, said during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting on autonomous vehicles Wednesday.

Previous story: Tesla Will Drop Self-Driving Feature That Runs Stop Signs

The company, which has disbanded its media relations department, did not respond to a request for comment on the NHTSA filing or have a representative at the hearing.

Self-driving car advocates who testified before the committee moved to distance themselves from Tesla and its so-called Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems. They told lawmakers the company's cars do not qualify as fully autonomous according guidelines that have adopted by federal regulators.

“Tesla is not a member of our association because it's not an autonomous vehicle,” said Ariel Wolf, general counsel to the recently-rebranded Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, which represents companies such as Ford Motor Co., Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. and Waymo LLC. “It's a driver assistance technology.”

Wolf said fully autonomous vehicles “are developed from the start to comply with all federal, state and local laws, as just one component of the safety assurances that are put into these technologies.”

Representative Julia Brownley, a California Democrat, said the debate over Tesla's driver assistance software shows “there seems to be some misunderstanding among the general public regarding the level of autonomy that some vehicles offer.”

Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, cited a lack of minimum standards from federal regulators and “confusion right now about what technologies can and can't do, and a human over-reliance upon some of the technologies.”

“Not to beat up on Tesla, and I don't mean to do that at all, but when a company calls a system AutoDrive or Autopilot or Full Self Driving, it really communicates a message that that's what it's going to do,” she said.

“The federal government needs to step in,” she said. “We need our need our regulators to do their jobs.”